


us, these bodies

by chateauofmyheart



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Character Study, Depersonalization, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tommy-centric, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, tommy is unkind to his body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23996686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chateauofmyheart/pseuds/chateauofmyheart
Summary: "Tommy and his body have an agreement. The agreement is as such: his body does only what he allows it to and he will treat it however he wants, and only at night, in the privacy of his room, does he allow himself to collapse.Tommy’s body does not have a choice, of course. It knows how his agreements work.And then there’s Alfie Solomons."(orfive times tommy's body betrays him around alfie and the time tommy lets it.)
Relationships: Tommy Shelby/Alfie Solomons
Comments: 36
Kudos: 166





	us, these bodies

**Author's Note:**

> this one's for @sholomons & @hardytcm on tumblr for being amazing lovely individuals willing 2 listen to my rambles!!! ily

Tommy and his body have an agreement. The agreement is as such: his body does only what he allows it to and he will treat it however he wants, and only at night, in the privacy of his room, does he allow himself to collapse.

Tommy’s body does not have a choice, of course. It knows how his agreements work.

And it does work. Tommy’s hands don’t shake when there’s a gun in his face, so he doesn’t have to clench his fists; his fists don’t clench when he’s angry, so he doesn’t have to force them open. He lights the flame on the first try, swallows the whole glass of whiskey without wincing, pulls on his coat in one flow of motion. He wins the fights and fucks the whores and doesn’t give anything away.

Tommy knows what they think of him. What they expect. He curated it, after all– most of it. It’s hard to smile nowadays, and sometimes he’s standing at the bottom of the river and everyone who talks to him is shouting from the bank, their toes in the dry soil while he’s in the waterlogged mud, calling down through the water with how their voices echo.

The rest of it, though, is all him.

He’s already dead, isn’t he? His body now is just a thing he drags behind him. A burden, the way it cries to curl up in a corner and lick its wounds like an animal. Like a beaten child. If his body had its way he would still be under the earth.

He knows, it knows that they’re living on borrowed time. He dug himself out and extended the licence, put off the expiration date, and his body therefore must pay the fee. So it takes the bullets and the fists and the days awake, and it doesn’t complain or stagger or make a fucking sound. They bury their fists into his body not knowing he and his body are not friends; pull blood from him like he still thinks of it as _his._ They don’t know his body is but an intimately-connected stranger to him, like a fellow soldier whose particular landscape of muscle you know better than your own but not what home he left behind. Like the one you couldn’t name but felt the tears of on your hands as he lay dying. (You pull each other to safety not because you care for each other– it’s a way of caring for yourself. Tommy and his body will burn together, in the end.)

He’s stared long enough in the dirty silver mirror over the dresser to know just how his face can twitch and twist when he lets it.

So he doesn’t let it. It’s all very simple– it’s business.

Just business. And of course, one must be a professional, in business, to earn proper respect. Which means no getting angry when it doesn’t benefit him. Which means no disgust at the unpleasant. Which means no shock at the unexpected, no laughing at the ridiculous, and no fucking fear. Ever.

His body knows this. It takes Billy Kimber’s bullet and doesn’t fall, returns the bullet right between his eyes and walks away. His flesh screams with him when they pull the bullet out, but his knees do not buckle. He drinks the whiskey, heaves Danny Whizzbang’s body away, almost lets Grace kiss him goodbye– all with a hole in his chest.

Afterwards he changes the bandages himself. Lays in bed, side by side with his body, staring up from the river bottom.

And then there’s Alfie Solomons.

I.

Tommy’s body is fresh from broken, coming apart at the seams underneath his clothes, and the heat of the building feels like another layer over his jacket, shoulders slumping under the weight of it.

Coming here may have been a mistake.

They sit in Mr. Solomons’ office. Their conversation is a labyrinth Tommy does his best to navigate, even though it feels like Solomons is winding around, leisurely, beating the bushes with that thin walking stick. He thinks he’s in charge, and Tommy lets him think that.

He keeps an eye on the man’s hands, the way they dip towards the drawer with the gun, then away, then back– there’s a delicacy to the curl of his blunt fingers. His heavy rings catch the light, and Tommy knows well what heavy rings like those could do. Solomons is an intimidating figure beyond simply what he represents: the bulk of him, the ease of his weight shifting back and forth in his chair lets Tommy know that this, too, is a man who knows how to use his body.

He can feel the pressure building inside him, the fear. It walked in with him, curled in his chest as apprehension, justifiable given the circumstances. But Solomons’ unpredictability has left him off-kilter, and his bruised mind is taking longer to keep up with the odd starts and fits of Solomons’ train of thought. There’s an exhaustion in his bones, the old cry of his body louder than usual, but Tommy doesn’t falter.

The gun is pulled from the wrong drawer.

Tommy’s body fails him.

Later, he will sit on the boat going back and wonder how he could’ve let it happen. Betrayed by his own body, of all things. For now he sits in Solomon’s office and tastes blood at the seam of his lips; coppery, tangible proof that he lost his nerve in the face of Solomons’ gun. It’s the simplest, most blatant fear response that gives way in the end.

His heart rate. Tommy wants to carve the knowing look right off Alfie Solomons’ face. Or run. He does neither; stays in the chair and refuses the handkerchief as a last pitiful attempt to maintain some control.

_“Tell us your plan.”_

At the end of their meeting, terms established and whiskey shared, Tommy still feels like he’s lost.

The next time they negotiate terms, Tommy makes sure he’s the one winning.

II.

They’re standing together, him and Solomons, in the open space of the bay doors. Tommy’s knuckles are painted red under his gloves, and his ears sting in the chill wind off the water behind them. There’s a fire between his lips, the exhaled smoke diffusing warmth into the air in front of his face.

Some days he thinks he’s going to set himself alight. A premature funeral– or overdue, depending on how he looks at it.

Solomons has a prayer scarf on, white with little knitted geometric designs in blue. He watches Tommy from under the dark brim of his hat as they move through the warehouse, inspecting the space. It puts him on edge, the watching– there’s a buzzing under his skin, his body on the verge of rebellion. (And what would it do? If his body were to have its own little revolution? Tommy knows revolution, the pointless culling and carnage. Give his body control and he’ll have that funeral sooner rather than later.)

When he meets Solomons’ gaze, he looks like he knows what Tommy’s thinking.

They finish peering around the warehouse where Tommy will be renting space for the foreseeable future, or at least until Tommy acquires it for himself. Not that he’s disclosed those plans with Solomons, who seems to be perfectly content being Tommy’s friend again.

_‘S just business, you know, mate._ Yes, I do, Mr. Solomons. _Good. That’s good, yeah._

So when Solomons invites him to lunch, Tommy goes. He takes him to a Jewish cafe in Camden Town, the nondescript storefront crammed in between a shoe shop and a small milk refinery.

The atmosphere inside, with the little tables gathered closest to the windows and back walls, murmuring people hunched over their individual assortments of white plates spotted with half-finished meals, the smell of coffee heavy in the air, is all unfamiliar to Tommy. He knows pubs, a few nicer hotel restaurants, the outdoor dinner stalls in the Chinese market; not this quaint display of urban eating habits. In Small Heath, you want coffee then you go home and fix it yourself. You want to share a meal, you do it over cheap booze.

Tommy’s back is straight against the metal bars of his chair, his legs crossed. Perfectly still, well-composed; the image of a businessman. Exactly what he is, and exactly what he needs to be.

Solomons orders. Tommy smokes. There’s a silence between them– he’d not call it tense, but he feels all the stiffness of his body as Solomons slouches back into his chair, hands resting lazily on his walking stick balancing across his lap.

This time, it’s his stomach who betrays him.

Solomons’ food arrives, two toasted flatbreads with a rich tomato spread and something green and plant-looking, and the smell of it crowds out the coffee in the air over their table. It’s overwhelming, luxurious and vibrant in a way that very nearly makes him nauseous. A nuance of unfamiliar flavors gather at the edges of his mouth, and he feels saliva pooling minutely around his teeth. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday, his stomach reminds him.

“Very nice, very nice,” Solomons says. Picks one up and bites into it with a decadent crunch. Tommy does not stare.

Then comes the question: “You sure you aren’t hungry, Thomas?”

His body’s response: an impassioned growl from the gut. Tommy wants to shoot something.

Despite everything, Solomons’ little laugh and the way he calls him _silly boy,_ Tommy ends up eating one of the flatbreads. He maintains as much dignity as he can, face empty, statue-still in his chair and neatly catching the crumbs on the tablecloth.

It’s too much for him, later, and his stomach churns unpleasantly with the weight of it all at once, but it doesn’t make any more noise, and Solomons, by some great blessing, doesn’t say a word about it.

III.

His body gets broken and he mends, like a plate that’s been glued back together– one of the nicer porcelain plates worth saving, so it does get saved but it’s a hurried surgery, glue running and shards missing. The pieces of him have been rearranged, pressing into his soft brain matter and the hollow behind his eyes.

It aches, the shattered bowl of his skull. There’s bits he’s not ever going to get back.

More than ever his body burdens him, slows him; finally the mangled corpse the war should’ve made it. It pleads harder now than it used to for an end, for a disappearance. The unwanted animal of it leans into every corner and shadow. It drags heavier than before, and some days he wants nothing more than to dump it in a shallow grave. Be done with it.

But it still owes him, his body. Tommy’s extended the expiration date once again –and he controls that date, doesn’t he, in the end? Just like his mother– cheap though it may feel, and thus his body will continue to honor their agreement. His body is still his body, finally, regardless of whether or not it’s been cracked open and let its contents be strewn about.

He lights the flame on the first try, swallows the vodka without wincing, pulls on his coat in one flowing motion. His face contorts in the mirror and he buries his fist in it. Every day the river gets deeper, the bottom muck gathering around him like a stone. He’s been standing here for months, and the mud’s getting high, swallowing him up. It creeps at the edge of his vision, encompassing darkness, and it is, briefly, so _tempting._ There’s no one at the river bank anymore– if there is, he can no longer hear them.

He’s at the bottom of the river when Alfie Solomons arrives at his house. But there’s still the light that reaches him there, at the muddy bottom, faint as it is. The light means he’s still visible. So he’s still got to hide.

Tommy maintains himself; his body does not slip, he is a professional, and they talk about nothing and everything on the wrong sides of Tommy’s office desk. Fall into the familiar flow of conversation, the winding and the rush. Not a labyrinth, not anymore, not since Tommy’s learned Alfie’s patterns, though the ache of his head makes it hard to keep up.

The rings on Alfie’s hands catch the curtain-glow light, and it’s telling, Tommy thinks, that they talk about Tommy’s head but not Alfie’s skin. He can see the itchy peel of it at the corners of him: the edge of his nostrils, the folds of his earlobes, the scratch of his hairline. Little deteriorations. Makes them more alike in some way.

He knows Alfie, now. The same way he knew his fellow soldiers– the intimate stranger. Knowing without needing the details, because he can feel the soul of him, the man’s essence. The same way he knows his body.

(Knowing does not precipitate caring.)

Tommy tells him he needs glasses. Alfie sits next to him and tells him how he can see into the future, and sees _him,_ and Tommy’s head hurts hurts _hurts._ The body’s pain is not a failure because it’s not visible, face never so much as twitching, muscles unbound.

What is a failure, however, is Alfie’s large, dry palm cupping his face –everyone else filed out, confidence renewed in the stone statue god Thomas Shelby OBE and ready to put his plan in motion– brief and silent, _knowing, seeing,_ and how Tommy’s breath catches unintentionally in his lungs.

IV.

Alfie betrays him again and his body betrays him again, and he throws the deadweight of it at Alfie, tackles him to the ground; presses up against him, cold body against hot, his hands grabbing at the thick dark fabric of Alfie’s coat and Alfie’s hands grabbing at his wrists. The smell of rum and bread. The buzzing underneath his skin crawling out into his fingers, them tingling with it. Maybe he manages to get to Alfie’s neck. Knees knock against the bone of his hip, heels dig at the backs of his thighs. Scrambling and unwilling beneath him.

Then Alfie screams at him, right in his face. And he can only gaze back, chest heaving and body frozen, feeling the hot breath and spittle against his jaw. Alfie’s righteous anger pours over him.

It’s terrifying, the way he’s getting used to this, the way his body rails against him in Alfie’s presence. The slips have been getting worse, getting bigger. The blood on his face is no longer his, though it tastes the same against his lips. He gets off the floor because he’s supposed to better than that, supposed to be a proper businessman.

But it’s not about business anymore, is it? Not for a long time.

They’ve broken bread and broken agreements, and were he a proper businessman –were it anyone else– Tommy would’ve killed him by now. Would’ve killed him just now, before, put a bullet in his head without a second thought, perfectly composed and not admitting a word of why he’s doing it. Body doing what it’s supposed to do. Following their agreement.

Instead, he’s standing here, being screamed at –truth, some of it is– and realizing that Alfie takes him out of the water. Voice loud, dark eyes boring into his, clearer than any river water could be. Alfie fucking Solomons, the fisherman, pulling him out of the depths. Except he doesn’t get his hands dirty, does he? No, he’s Moses, parting the flow of Tommy’s river and leading him away from the mud.

Alfie’s no messiah. He doesn’t cure anything, can’t magically pull all Tommy’s pieces together, and Tommy’s not sure he wants him to.

His body wants to push against Alfie’s again, feel the violence of two people meeting in one place, one holy spot; so he can see if he’ll still end up on top without the element of surprise, so Alfie can yank him up from the mud, so the rush of river water will fade from his ears. It wants to know Alfie’s body, biblically– and there’s more than one way to do that, Tommy knows. He’s a sporting man. But he also knows better than to listen to his body.

_I did not know about your boy, though._ I know. I saw.

Tommy walks away.

V.

Despite himself, Tommy’s amused by Alfie. It’s not something he’s proud of. His body is treacherous, the way it twitches his mouth up at the corners, rounds his cheeks just enough that he can feel it, later, squinting over paperwork.

Alfie knows, he must know, and Tommy hates him for the way he doesn’t so much as mention it, just keeps watching him. Tommy hates the way he watches him; thinks, once, about swinging his cap off, on the rare occasion he’s wearing it, and blinding Alfie for it.

God, but he hasn’t laughed in so long.

\+ I.

Tommy’s thinking about borrowed time. That’s what this is, isn’t it? What it’s all about? He should’ve died in the French mud, all those years ago, but he didn’t. He should’ve taken the bullet, should’ve bled out, should’ve been buried alive under all the dirt, but he didn’t.

He keeps living, even now, keeps dragging his body around. Ugly, knitted thing that it is. It wears its many fractures the way women drape themselves in pearls, dripping in decadent abuse. He’s not kind to it, never has been, because it belongs to him and he can do whatever he wants with it– no more opium, but he still drinks and smokes and calls three hours a good night’s sleep. The expiration date is of his choosing: the bullet now, or later. The funeral now, or later.

Alfie would prefer later, Tommy knows, should he ever bother to ask him.

(Alfie, with his unhallowed body carrying its own rot like sanctified gold, as he’d once said. _Cancer, mate._ They don’t talk about it. Tommy used to think there were three of them in this house: Tommy, his body, and Alfie. Now he’s realizing there may be four.)

Out here, by the ocean, Tommy wonders how he ever thought the river bottom was deep– there is nothing like the yawning abyss beneath the waves. Nothing. Tommy knows fields, knows forests and Small Heath and cobblestone streets, is beginning to know the beach, the white stretch of sand they walk along. His body seizes at the thought of the dark waters and Tommy listens for once.

He’s not a businessman anymore. Left that all behind when he came out here to Margate, Shelby Company Ltd. in steadier hands– his don’t shake, wouldn’t dare. The agreement between him and his body still stands, now out of habit more than anything. Alfie doesn’t mind his blank face or his stiff body, says it’s what he’s used to, after all.

Still, there’s a particular smile he has reserved just for the moments when Tommy’s body gets to do what it wants.

Which, Tommy's found, is curling up like a wounded animal against the warm press of Alfie beside him, hot against cold, fractured and rotting bodies lying together above the dirt and waves.

This, the rebellion of his body. His possessions litter the house, Alfie’s touch litters his skin. All that carnage.

(The gun is shaking and Tommy’s shaking and there’s a roaring somewhere behind him. The sky is dark. His feet are sinking into the mud.

Alfie stands before him, walking stick at his side, eyes dark under the brim of his hat, watching him. Slowly, motion careful but firm, he reaches up and closes his hand over the barrel of the gun. Over Tommy’s hands.

The gun wavers, dips, and lowers. Tommy is _tired._

He falls forward, face burying itself in Alfie’s neck, the warm scent of bread and rum mixed with the new sea salt of him. He gives his body this.)

**Author's Note:**

> find me at https://chateauofmymind.tumblr.com !!! im lonely & full of opinions


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